a little of this & that

Today someone asked me if I work on one piece of furniture at a time or keep a few things going concurrently. I definitely fall into the latter category. The past two weeks prove it. After finishing up a carved box I assembled and finished a joined stool - but was also working on two Jennie Alexander-style ladderback chairs. I’ve begun weaving the hickory bark seat on one of these.

weaving the seat part 1

I weave bark seats in two sessions, letting the first dry before finishing it off. As it dries, the bark strips shrink in width, then I shove them closer together and weave in filler strips. So this chair has now sat for the past 2 days or so. Maybe tomorrow I’ll finish weaving it.

One thing I worked on between the joined stool and weaving that seat was making a couple of applied turnings for my long-neglected “dressing” box - I’ve written before about making these turned decorations - they’re half-columns/pilasters - but in more recent examples, I’ve changed a couple of minor things about how I make them. They’re still glued up from three strips - two maple pieces that will be the turnings and a thinner center strip that helps keep it intact when I mount it on the spring pole lathe. In the photo below you can see the center point is on that strip - if it were on a glue line between just the two maple pieces, the action of mounting it on the lathe & tightening it would split the thing apart.

rough blank glued up

You can see in that photo that I didn’t plane the stock down to the actual size - I figure it’s easier to do that once it’s ready to become cylindrical. and for that I started using the German bench dogs I made last year. With the stock held between the two points of these dogs, it’s easy to turn the blank to the next surface that needs work.

tall bench dogs